I'm an Emmy-winning former NBC and Wall Street Journal reporter turned speaker and strategist on quotability, connective behavior and making places and conferences more meaningful by storyboarding them. I’ve been a state senator’s chief of staff, co-founder of nine PACs, founding board member of Annie’s Homegrown and coached over 30 pre-IPO teams. Like you, perhaps, I am inordinately curious about why we do what we do. I also write for the Huffington Post and Harvard Business Review and am the author of Moving From Me to We, Resolving Conflict Sooner, Walk Your Talk and Getting What You Want. Let's share ideas at www.sayitbetter.com, Moving From Me to We and @kareanderson

What Vulnerability Looks Like to Psychopaths, Monks and the Rest of Us

Ironically, both psychopaths and Tibetan monks detect deep emotions that are invisible to others. Psychopaths are much better at recognizing “those telltale signs in the gait of traumatized assault victims” notes The Wisdom of Psychopaths author, Kevin Dutton.

Tibetan monks, steeped in meditative practice, are also especially adept at reading feelings that are hidden from the rest of us, Paul Ekman discovered. Ekman, is the preeminent expert on lying and on the six universally expressed emotions in the face — anger, sadness, happiness, fear, disgust and surprise. Scarily, psychopaths score especially high on the Hare Self-Report Scale of psychopathy in seeing those core expressions, especially the ones that make us most vulnerable, fear and sadness, according to Sabrina Demetrioff.

Another astounding finding was that, in lab tests, a Tibetan monk had no startle reflex reaction to “a gun being fired just centimeters away from the ear: the maximal threshold of human acoustical tolerance,” reports Dutton. Ekman, and his co-researchers, Robert Levenson and Richard Davidson, concluded, according to Dutton, that “practicing a relaxed state of mind” is conducive to “keeping a cool head at one time or another.”

Yet it appears that psychopaths don’t need that meditative practice to stay calm under pressure and or to be inordinately observant, especially of weaknesses in others.

Psychopaths feel little or none of the arousal reactions (heart beat, sweat, blood pressure, etc.) that others have when viewing “a series of horrific, nauseating and erotic images,” found Dutton. Like the monks, psychopaths have greater self-mastery of their emotions. Unlike the monks, however, they seem to be born with this capacity to not feel nor react.

That may not be the most surprising conclusion from Dutton’s book however.

Unlike our common impression of psychopaths as dangerous serial killers, and some are, others use their high-performing capacity to remain calm in stressful times to conduct surgery, lead soldiers or become sought-after CEOs. After all, as Dutton suggests, if you’re having brain surgery, wouldn’t you want someone who is not distracted by feelings and completely in control and concentrating on the operation? If your life were in danger on the battlefield, wouldn’t you want someone who could coolly survey the situation and deeply recognize others’ reactions, to determine the best way to rescue you?

Psychopaths’ adept detection of vulnerability is one of their most potent skills.

Ironically, the sharing of one’s vulnerability with trusted others is one of the prime gateways to overcoming shame according to the star of one of the ten most watched TED talks, Brene Brown. In Daring Greatly, she describes the paradoxical power of embracing our vulnerability and acknowledging our fears as a path towards being more courageous and connected with others. That means letting go of the need for certainty and control.

Clearly Brown and Dutton approach fearlessness from very different yet well-researched perspectives:

• Dutton shows that psychopaths are born with fearlessness that enables them to remain cool and capable, with a lack of empathy and thus capable of serial murder or successful surgery.

• Alternatively, for the rest of us mortals Brown, a longtime researcher on the effects of shame (something psychopaths don’t feel) sees the path toward fearlessness through owning our vulnerability. In so doing we become willing to take greater risks and be more deeply connected. These are very human benefits that make our lives meaningful yet make no sense to psychopaths who are, by nature, risk takers and often expert manipulators of others, even if, on the surface they appear to be charismatic and even visionary leaders or collaborators.

Before I share some of the lessons from Brown’s book, want to guess which book would most appeal to which sex, according to bets taken by a wildly unscientific poll of five audiences in which I have spoken after describing both?*

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Enjoyed the post. One thing to note is that Dutton overstates the results of Ekman’s startle reflex experiment (as have lots of others). It’s not true that the monk (Matthieu Ricard) had no startle reflex reaction. It’s still an amazing experiment, but the results keep getting misreported. Here’s my post on that:

Once again- you’ve synthesized information from a fascinating selection of books to create an inspiring, actionable set of guidelines to be more effective. The only problem is- now I want to read all those books and don’t know how I’ll find the time!

Once again- you’ve synthesized information from a fascinating selection of books to create an inspiring, actionable set of guidelines to be more effective. I always benefit from your insights. The only problem is- now I want to read all those books and don’t know how I’ll find the time!

Plane flights to giving speeches, Francine… the side benefit of sitting for long periods up in the air where i somehow feel I can indulge myself… BTW, your continuing wise work as a mentor and advisor in silicon valley has been quite amazing.. I have been hearing about you from so many places and you are too humble to tell others so i will at least share the link to your site http://fgordon.com/